One Way to Turn a Mac Into a PC Just Got Better — There are two common methods for running Microsoft Windows and Windows programs on an Apple Macintosh, and one of those methods just got better and easier. — The first approach uses a feature called Boot Camp that comes free on every new Mac.

Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China — SAN FRANCISCO — A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words.

Happy New Year — We've just passed the Jewish new year's holiday. Happy new year! It's a custom in this holiday to eat an apple and honey for a sweet new year. — Sadly, this year starts with a little bit sour Apple. If you follow my blog, you probably remember that I wrote …

Google on Android: Search — On September 23, T-Mobile announced the world's first Android-powered phone, the G1. The phone comes preloaded with Search, Maps, Gmail with Contacts, Calendar, Google Talk, and YouTube. The applications are easy to use, fully synchronized with the web …

YouTube Rolls Out Post-Roll Video Ads — YouTube, which has never had trouble growing an audience but hasn't yet figured out the trick for monetizing them thar eyeballs, is adding a trick from the old playbook: post-roll advertisements. As we understand it (and this has been confirmed with the company) …

AT&T's Samsung i907 is called Epix — Well, there goes BlackJack III... We just got a hot tip from one of our readers and it clearly shows what we all knew as the Samsung i780 dressed up in AT&T branding as the AT&T Epix. There's also been some physical tweaks to make the device more polished.

Apple settles class-action suit over faulty notebook adapters — Apple has agreed, without admitting fault, to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that power adapters sold with certain Power PC-based iBook and PowerBook notebooks were defective in that they could dangerously fray, sparks and prematurely fail to work.

Yes, Yahoo Cuts Coming. How Many? (YHOO) — Now that even the most stubbornly optimistic Yahoos have had time to digest Jerry Yang's “shape up” memo, layoff rumors are in full swing. The most pessimistic prediction we've heard so far, from an anonymous tipster: 3,500 heads will roll. Plausible?

Hi5 translations go live — Social network Hi5 has launched a site translation project, a week after the announcement that the company had created a “crowdsourced translation” app for use on the OpenSocial developer platform and several months after it initially announced plans for translation.

To encrypt or not? That is the question — Even before someone hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account I had been wondering whatever happened to encryption. — Encryption — the science of rendering plain text unreadable by anyone but the intended reader — made a splash in the mid-1990s.

New meme: Tag five friends to register to vote — Okay, I'll help on this. A Google blog post and the corresponding video ask people to register to vote (find out how at http://maps.google.com/vote ) and/or send this video to five of their friends. I'm game for that, mainly because Jonah Hill …

Nokia boss has high praise for iPhone — Nokia boss (President and CEO) Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is full of praise for Apple, though he's digging in his heels to compete with the iPhone company. — He described Apple's impact on the industry across the last year and said the company had done the industry “a big favour”.